


What He Needs

by Loopdeloup



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:41:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27410617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loopdeloup/pseuds/Loopdeloup
Summary: She had said to him, “Commander, you and I have the same problem. I think it makes sense to try and solve it together, don’t you?”From the very first moment, she just expects him to fall in behind her, like he’s on her team, like he’s always been on her team.And, from the very first moment, he just does. He can’t articulate why. Even to himself.
Relationships: Chakotay & Kathryn Janeway, Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway
Comments: 14
Kudos: 71





	What He Needs

** What he needs **

From the second he sees her, this Captain Kathryn Janeway, she has an electrifying effect on him. It feels like fate.

He has transported directly onto the bridge with his boarding party of three, all with their weapons drawn, fingers on the trigger, hot for action, expecting the worst.

Yet she stalks straight towards them obstructing her own people’s chance to defend her, unarmed and flashing with energy, right in the middle of everyone’s line of fire. Somehow her refusing to acknowledge the possibility of there being shots fired miraculously makes it so. She turns to her own people, holding out her hand in an imperious gesture to cease and desist, impatiently snapping, “Put down your weapons!”

She then turns to him and his men, and commands, “You won’t need those here.”

What he thought were his men. She quickly further disorients him by revealing that Tuvok the Vulcan, who he’d come to rely on as his own most trusted advisor, is no less than _her Chief of Security_. Who has advised him _right into her waiting hands_.

He feels like he’s been hit with a hammer.

This woman is no mere Starfleet officer, no mere leader. She is more like a force of nature. No one could be unaffected by the authority she radiates, her confidence, her certainty, her command.

Part of the dazed thrill he feels is animal, sure. She is beautiful. And somehow, despite the standard de-gendered Starfleet uniform she wears, she comes across like the Empress of a mirror universe, sexiness incarnate. There is sexiness crackling away in the way she carries herself, her battle fire, her supreme self-assurance.

He is startled out of his state of shock by seeing that awful turncoat mercenary, prettyboy Tom Paris, somehow appearing behind her, back on Team Starfleet. Seeing him awakens the violence that lies not far below the surface in situations as desperate as this, and his instinct to object to all this confusion is to rip that traitor’s throat out.

But she pushes herself protectively between Paris and himself, mere inches away from touching him, drawing herself up in challenge. She unleashes a full-furied death glare and growls in that husky bedroom voice, “You are dealing with a member of my crew. I expect you to treat him with the same respect that I would treat a member of yours _.”_

Her words are tough, official and professional, but his body picks up the message that is not said. You know when a woman looks at you like she would invite you into her bed. And oh, he knows it at once, her wide dilated eyes staring him down, her lop-sided challenging scowl, her glance straying to his lips, flicking down over his body.

This is a moment of deep danger, delicate negotiations, everything hanging in the balance. And she is turned on by it.

So there is something physical between them. Yet to this, too, there is something more. 

She had said to him, “Commander, you and I have the same problem. I think it makes sense to try and solve it together, don’t you?”

From the very first moment, she just expects him to fall in behind her, like he’s on her team, like he’s always been on her team.

And, from the very first moment, he just does. He can’t articulate why. Even to himself.

It could be this feeling that there is mutual respect. She does not address him as a Starfleet Captain to the infamous rogue leader of a band of rebels she has been sent to capture. She picks him out and addresses him as if they are equals, both in this same situation, both leaders responsible for their people as their main concern, reasonable people seeking the common good in a state of crisis, all other affiliations coming afterwards. This is surprising, because while it is actually true of the way _he_ operates, he never thought any Starfleet officer could ever be willing to concede as much.

Much less would they be willing to act on the same criteria themselves.

Nor would any Maquis, for that matter.

The relief of finding someone with integrity assuming he too will respond in kind almost adds to his sense of disbelief. He’d come to believe the universe just didn’t work this way.

He senses they recognize an affinity in each other. _Someone else_ in this position. Someone else who knows the responsibility of holding all others in one’s care. Someone else with the obligation to make lightning assessments, lightning judgments, accurate appraisals of the situation, animate and inanimate, human, alien and mechanical, almost metaphysical. Beyond that, someone with a feeling for the run of luck, of all those capabilities and needs, the balance of power, where to push, where to give, where to insist, where to cede, how to juggle all these things, give all the players what they require, how to take what they can give – not what they _want_ to give, but what they _can_ give, what they _will_ give – And then how to put thing in motion, and _make it work_.

Someone who, based on all these things, instinctively knows how it is most likely going to play out.

Most of all, someone who knows how to win the day, or leave the winning for another day, allowing for a gracious bowing down, dignity intact.

In less than a second, a single meeting of eyes, they see these things in each other, and all those spheres suspended in the air, about to fall.

The two ships, both in extreme peril.

Heavy losses on both sides, key crewmen missing in action, enemies and circumstances unknown abounding.

She’d pushed to stand between him and all those Starfleet phasers, their eyes had met. And they knew.

*

“We’ll divide into teams,” she says. “While Chakotay and I are looking for Torres and Kim, Tuvok can look for . . .”

She continues snapping out a plan of action but he can barely concentrate on what comes after because his mind is already singing with her words, _Chakotay and I..._

The plan apparently complete, she turns to him for his confirmation, not a flicker of doubt in her gaze, no possibility he might not be willing to follow her lead, “Agreed?”

He surprises himself by nodding his assent. Not even a quiver or a condition.

How could he do otherwise? He’s known her less than ten minutes and he already senses he would follow this woman anywhere. 

He follows her and it feels like fate.

*

He sacrifices his ship to save hers. He stays aboard to the very last minute to make sure it has maximum destructive effect on this new instant enemy that has united them.

He has delivered his crew up to her.

He already just knows she will do the right thing by them.

This feels like fate too.

*

“Who is _she_ to be making these decisions for all of us?” hisses B’Ellana, when Janeway orders the destruction of the array that will leave them all stranded 75,000 light years from home, just to protect a defenseless community of particularly inept child-like aliens, who are - it must be admitted - likely doomed in the middle term if not the immediate term anyway.

“She is _the Captain_ ,” he says, in his sternest Pirate King voice.

*

When later she places two fingers to the middle of his chest, looks him close in the face and asks him to serve as her first officer, he does not hesitate to accept. 

The smile she gives him in response thaws out the last dark neglected corners of his heart. Despite the heavy burden he knows he has just accepted, and the desperate challenge of merging their two opposing crews, he feels suddenly eager and young and innocent like a boy again, full of hope and optimism and the irrational certainty that everything will be OK.

After a long moment he becomes aware he is just smiling goofily back at her, like a lad with a crush, while she is smiling up at him, her hand hovering close to the center of his chest.

She snaps out of it first, colour rising to her cheeks as she takes two small steps back. She places her hands on her hips and puts on a mock captainly scowl, "I must warn you, it's not going to be easy. I'm told I can be a pretty harsh task-master. And not much fun of morning before my third or fourth litre of coffee."

"Oh, I think I'll be able to manage. I've had to put up with some right tyrants in my day. I'll be sure to always have some coffee on hand in case of emergency."

This discovery of the easy way they can play and joke and flirt together adds to his sense of rightness.

This is a partnership that can work.

On a professional level, instantly.

But the personal level was going to be where the real rewards lay. 

*

Over the following months he is relieved to discover his instincts were right.

_All but the part about them falling into bed with each other before the week was out._

He learns she has so many qualities and talents that he was only scratching the surface when at first sight he'd equated her to a mirror universe Empress. She is so much more than that.

She is good.

She is a force for good. She upholds justice and fairness and service and kindness and ethics and sacrifice and respect for the other and compassion and _doing the right thing_ _whatever the cost_ ; all those unrealistic Starfleet tropes he had once so fervently believed in, and that he had become ashamed of as naïve, idealistic, incompatible with the real universe.

She gives them back, lets him believe again.

It is such a relief to be able to put down anger and outrage and disappointment and stop living in an ugly place of hatred, injury, aggression and revenge, where all good is downtrodden by monolithic needs of the powers that be, by the expedient, the practical. Leadership by right of being the meanest and toughest, by right of packing the biggest punch. She lets him put his Pirate King self away, his punch-drunk Maquis Marauder, his angry warrior.

She lets him take up civilization, calmness, gentleness, clothing himself again in fairness and rightness. She allows him to draw on again, with his freshly replicated Starfleet uniform, a place in the universe he can be proud of, a leadership style based on ability, that enables and is enabling.

Despite the perils and challenges constantly thrown at them by the Delta Quadrant, for the first time in many years, when he wakes up each morning he finds himself smiling.

*

_As for them falling into bed together, one can always live in hope._

*


End file.
